Sanya said,
"Another thing - your pet should still be able to contribute in a group to a red fight. In a group, every entity attacking the enemy adds a bonus to attackers. That bonus makes it easier for everyone in the group (including pets) to land damage on the enemy. So a four person, two pet group would have six small bonuses to attack, assuming everyone in the group is attacking, casting, or some such. This bonus is supposed to take your pet to red/low purple capability in a group.
"

Key phrase I would like to discuss here is,"In a group, every entity attacking the enemy adds a bonus to attackers."

I think this code is bugged atm, the only people who are viewed as attacking the enemy, are mellee classes with attack turned on, this code also hurts several other classes while making a caster heavy group suffer. If you want more info on this let me know, so I dont hijack this thread.

CON has been proven to not affect HP, only when you cast a CON buff does it increase HP, meaning CON never does the same thing, and for all we know edits some other factor in a player, and this is with players, I doubt it even affects mobs.

STR - Trolls having double the STR of dwarves do not do more dmg, it's been tested in other threads. How can you NOT do more dmg when your is doubled???

QUI - Only been proven to reduce archer draw times, so your QUI debuff(if it even affects mobs) should only work on mob archers.

Exactly why it would be nice for Mythic to shed some light on the matter. I've been CON debuffed in RVR and my HPs were halved, but debuffing the CON of a mob doesnt seem to make the combat go by any faster.

From what I can tell the dex buff change is not the problem. Up until level 35 I never buffed my single dex buff on my pet and only 50% of the time did I buff it with dex/qui buff. I've noticed a huge change in his hiting after the patch. Even running around with pet completely unbuffed, it used to be able to take a 1/4-1/3 life off yellow before he died and now i'm lucky if he takes 1/8 off a yellow mob before he dies.

That explaination only works for people who always buffed dex on thier pets.

Wow, this is an amazing thread! The minimal amount of flamage has my jaw on the floor, but allow me to pick it up and stress a point I fear everyone has been missing. The big picture folks.

Scenario: I'm finally level 50. I get to hop off the exp treadmill, give a contented sigh, then get my scrawny elven ass over to Midgard for some troll bashing fun with my guildies.

My group of 8 level 50's run into a group of 8 level 50 Midgards. Heads start to roll. In this perfect scenario we all con even to eachother… except for my pet which is level 44. Is my pet going to be useless here? When I sick it on the dwarf healer who is level 50 will all my pet be doing a whiffing a cool breeze by his midget head? Or will he be smashing it in? Because in this case the level 50 dwarf healer will be even con to me but purple to my pet. The level 50 champion next to me will be able to go toe to toe with a level 50 troll. The level 50 eldrich behind me will be able to nuke down another level 50. If all I'm able to do is stun and allow my pet to be a mild inconvience to my enemies (if that) then I might as well throw on my self only damage shield (wtf is with that?!) ready my staff and go hit the buggers a few times before I die. It'll be about the exact same usefulness to the cause.

As for the fucktard who called me a whiner for putting all my points into enchantments rendering myself useless because of this nerf. Lol! Sure, my primary is Enchantments, but my secondary is light. And what, I'm supposed to pull a crystal ball out of my magic ass and read the mind of this game's developers? I played my class as it was the best way to play it at the time. Never did I expect a change to be applied to my class which would totally and completely alter the way I play my character.

The effectiveness my pet has displayed against red and purples is substandard. Sure he can hit it once in a while, but not enough to make much of a difference. It would be the same as having a level 20 eldrich in a group of level 27's fighting purples. The eldrich would 95% of the time get his nukes resisted. I'm sorry but landing a nuke 5% of the time is not making a valuable contribution to the group. Sure I could nuke the mob too more to compensate for my feebled pet, but add a few nukes with a pet heal and we have a mob who is very mad at the enchanter.

hailofarrows, your posts are not helping the issue one bit. Please refrain from the derogative remarks.

The bottom line here is ME states that most classes should be able to solo blues/yellows effectively. When soloing, all but pet casters get all the experience. Pet casters must give up a portion of that experience to their pet, thus they get less experience than other classes soloing. The solution for balance is either we should be able to effectively solo oranges and low reds or remove the code for pets getting a portion of the experience in my opinion.

I play a druid and have it up to 34 now and want no unfair advantage on xp or RvR fighting.

I like to group and solo depending on how much time I can put into the game that day and my mood. Picked the class and considered very carefully my point distribution to accomidate that type of playstyle.

The impact on a druid is less in this instance since they can take a hit or should I say they die slower than a pure caster pet class. This seems to have been considered since my pets now con high grey low green to me, but through my buffs my pet would have some chance of hitting and maintaining aggro on an orange to me. (my target mob was a yellow btw orange allways a close fight and would only do them if they were in my pull path)

Druids have no offensive spells except a dot which provides a few ticks of extra damage so the battles turn to melee which we have no offensive skills in. We have a weapon damage add spell that helps.

With our pet in the current condition, I could probably do yellows fairly effectivly, but god help me if there is an add or I miss a beat somewhere. Not much margin for error at all.

I'd say we need to have our pet be able to do some damage against our target con mobs, whatever Mythic makes it for us. If the target is blue/yellow take away pet xp. If the pet is gonna take xp then the pet needs to perform some function.

If the target becomes blue/yellow I'd sure like to spend my points differently since my points in the pet spec would not help me.

Didn't really want to play a full blown healer either.

***edit***
Based on this statement.

The change we made was to the monster/pet dex spell line (this was in the patch notes, BTW). The OLD line basically gave your pets a straight up bonus to the "to hit" factor - the pet's chance of landing a hit. The old line was also broken - instead of adding a small number, it added a percentage. This allowed pets to hit monsters three or four COLORS above their level as opposed to three or four LEVELS above their level. The NEW dex buff line is entirely different - it decreases the damage a pet takes when it is hit. It essentially increases armor factor for your pet.

One reason I picked a "summoner" character class was to also be able to solo, I hope that Mythic is not only concerned about the pet nerf if it affects being "viable in a group"?

I'm mystified as to why a "bug" that evidently made it through beta & character balancing has been now "fixed". Seems like it was a "feature" of the pet's, not a bug if it made it this far. Now, it's a nerf instead of a bug fix.

I'll still continue with my Druid summoner character, since one of the things I really liked about DAoC was the summoners, but my Enchanter now looks like he's retired ...

Cabalists don’t have dex buffs in their spell lines either! We get a Str/Con buff that increases the pets stats by…uhm….I don’t know since I can’t see the pets stats.

As a level 19 Cabalist, my pre-patch pet was horrible. Anything that cons yellow to me cons red or better to my pet making the mob as elusive as a 40 year old virgin. Post-patch this problem has been exacerbated. It's painfully obvious that his hit % has decreased below the already dismal rate. What about my pet buffs? Did I have them on? The answer is YES. However, the buffs I DO receive for my pet, attack speed and damage add spells, are all geared for dishing out more damage which are completely worthless if my pet cannot hit the mob.

Yes, there are RARE instances where the pet DOES hit the mob, but they are few and far between. This should NOT be the case with a class that is VERY dependent upon their pets.

I have NOT seen a difference with the Sorcerer pets. Yesterday, my wife, a level 19 Sorceress, charmed a level 19 Tomb Raider Commander. It was her pet who single handedly took down a debuffed yellow con Salisbury Giant, while my pet barely managed to live 30 seconds. (Debuffs on the Giant were the 21% attack speed decrease & 44 point strength debuff)

I whole-heartedly agree that our pets should NOT suck up xp!!! The simulacrum is what defines the class!

Remove the XP drain from the pet!

&

Make the pet an equal level con (or one level below you)! This way he can be of GREAT use to a team that hunts higher leveled mobs, i.e. his connect ratio is comparable to a tank of similar level. If anyone thinks that this will cause a rift in balance, please tell me why.

So I decided I should log in and try fighting a couple things too see if I noticed this drastic nerf.

I logged in summoned my pet, buffed it up, ran over near teh tower with the gales, bocans beetles and such.

Waited for my pet to catch up hehe.

Ok... lets start with a green... I am a little nervous to die after hearing all this.

Send pet in at a green bocan. Of course no problem... but I did notice something. My pet is not taking damage like it used to... it is getting hit, but it doesn't seem like it is getting hit as hard as before??? not sure.

Anyway... green dead, no problem.... good. Lets move to blue.

Blue again no problem, a couple of misses, but no biggie... also seems to take less damage than before... so heals could be spaced out a bit more.

Ok... blue dead, no problem... good... lets move to yellow.

Damn... no yellows... but there is an orange beetle.

Refresh some buffs, rest to regain power.

Send pet in at orange beetle.

Whiffs alot, but still doing damage, also still seems to be taking less damage than before.

I wait til pet is about 1/4 health and toss a heal from a distance... agro still on pet and it is winning.

At this point pet gets jumped by a green bocan.

I toss a nuke at the beetle to help the pet out(have not nuked at all until orange beetle) pet still maintains agro.

Toss another nuke at beetle, pet still has agro.

Hasn't hit the bocan once, I toss a heal. Bocan stays on pet and nearly dead beetle starts crawling my way. Drop a minimal stun on beetle to keep it away from me, then pet finishes it and turns to the bocan.

Finishes the bocan.

Power at about 40% battle took longer than before... but I didn't see any major risk of dying.

So I guess what I am saying is that I am not that upset about this with the minimal testing I have done.

I can still solo oranges... probably not all types... as we know not all mobs are created equal... but I was able to do it.

I did not try a red or purple... because I think anyone who soloed these to begin with was wasting their time... downtime involved and not much more exp than lower stuff... it was never worth it other than to say you could do it.

Again... this is limited testing... so don't flame the hell out of me... also this is only an Enchanter and only at lvl 21... so glean from it what you will.

But, if I never knew about this 'nerf', I would have noticed something different... but I don't think I would have died over it.

I still think that we should get some more options in our enchantment line like I mentioned in an earlier post.

And some fixes would also be nice... like the speed buff on pet, cancelling spells, and our useless self only damage shield... and the pet damage shield(anyone use this?)

Your explanation does not explain Uppa's (original poster) situation at all. As others have already stated, Sorcerers do not have any sort of DEX buff for their pets. So in essense, Uppa should notice no difference between pre-patch and post-patch in his battles. Yet he does.

I'm not happy about the changes to pets, mainly that it was not annouced. Last night I nearly got a friend killed because my pet missed, and missed, and missed.....

I hunt with a group of three people and my pet. We take on the ocassional red. Well my pet...who usually contributes...wasn't helping AT ALL. I nearly got our ranger killed because one of my main attacks was doing nothing.

If enchanters were in so bad a need for a fix, why isn't Hibernia overflowing with enchanters. The players are not idiots. The distribution of classes on the server is a much better indication of balance than any screwball programmer notion. If anything, enchanters are underrepresented, not as bad as mentalists, but nothing to suggest they were so overpowered they needed a nerf.

Mythic: If what happened was intended, say so. If it was a mistake and you are going to fix it, say so. But don't tell me you don't know what happened, or try it out for a while, or stop whining. Look at the title of the thread. If this was some egghead theoretical discussion you wouldn't have to ask players to be calm. Players are pissed off and they have every right to be.

(1) A production environment is not the correct place to introduce such a drastic change. This so-called "problem" has been in the game since the beginning. Right or wrong, it is the way things have worked for thousands of your customers. I think a bit of caution needs to be exercised before you start whacking at things. I work in a very technical field and there are many inconsistencies due to legacy code and architectures that I have to deal with. If I went out of my way to fix what I perceive as a "bug", it throws everything else our of whack? Why - because the environment has come to expect a certain behavior with the bug built in. If the test server was unable to catch this problem, then something is wrong with the testing environment. If this change is perceived as the correct thing to do, then you should stand behind it and state it for the record. This waffling of give us your feedback, give us logs, help us understand - it all just makes me feel like you don't have your act together, and it's just a matter of time before this will happen again. Again, balance cannot be achieved against an ideal in a production environment - balance needs to be achieved against the reality of the current conditions.

(2) Whether a certain class is overpowered in a specific context needs to be evaluated in the whole context of the game. I play an enchanter, and I can assure you that I am the last character to be picked in a group. I can also assure you that I have limited ability in a RvR environment. What I did excel in is soloing - and it met my playing style. Was I so uber that everybody was playing enchanters? The facts are obvious that enchanters were near the bottom third in popularity of player classes. So we were overpowered because we could solo oranges, and this violated the goals of the game. Well the reality is a lot different. I have paladin friends who can continually solo yellows because they can twist chants. All my fighter friends can solo yellows if they have good gear.

(3) Expectations versus reality. It is difficult to come to the player community and tell us not to be emotional about drastic reductions in capabilities. We play this game for fun - not to be frustrated. There are many real problems with each class. I can list some of my pet peeves about the enchanter: speed spell does not work on pet, pet focus damage shield is unuseable, self damage shield is idiotic for a caster, pet buffs itself just when I need him to attack, pet's health bar doesn't update correctly at times, unimaginative pet design. My fun factor would be improved a lot if these issues were fixed. Instead, I see Mythic focussing on reductions of capabilities. One day to the next, I have no idea what to expect from my class. At this point, I almost feel like a fool for investing heavily in my class.

In summary, instead of pursuing class balance against an ideal, I really suggest you focus on making the classes FUN to play. I think your customers will much happier and you will be much more successful as company.

It's not only the pet damage I'm concerned about, it's the fact that they don't hit often enough.

I do alot of RvR at my level. I use my pet to hit casters and interrupt casts. Right now, they swing, and miss. Swing and miss. Over and over again. My pet used to chew through a caster pretty quick, if they made the mistake of coming too close to me, and within reach of my pet. Now, my pet can be shrugged off, and someone can easily just run away.

Enchanter pets are 6/7 our level. Why are Cabalist/Spiritmaster pets 7/8 their level? Ours should be too. We don't have anything to make up for it, yet those classes have life leech, better debuffs, AE DOT (Cab) and alot more. Why are we the weakest pet class in the most magical realm?

I've reported the runspeed song, Effervescence, not working on our pets since beta 3. It's still not fixed.

You'll want a pet that can actually be useful against a level 50 player. Considering Enchanter pets only get to be level 42 when the owner is level 50, they will be useless against a level 50 player now.

I'm level 42, and my pet is level 36. I usually can kill yellow con casters in RvR. Right now, my pet can't kill yellow con casters anymore, because it misses constantly. I can't imagine how useless my pet will be against a tank class now, and I'm full spec in Enchantments!

Exp doesn't matter. Soon exp will mean very little to us. Enchanter pets are already gimped compared to other pet classes, and now, they will be of no use to me in RvR.

Again, I see no reason to play this game if classes are going to be changed so dramatically. If I had known Enchanter pets were THIS weak, I would have played an Eldritch. But I won't start over. That's 42 levels I don't want to do again, just to see Eldritch get nerfed too.

Hmmm 18 Sorcerer with 18 pet here: Galahad server: Testing will be done tonight and reported in the early morning: yellow after yellow of different varieties...

What i have seen so far: couple of days ago: My pet would attack a yellow i pulled with my dex/qui debuff and beat it won handily without my help (lagged, it looked like it was attacking me the whole time). Upon completion my pet was just under 1/2 and i didnt get hit once... (even with lag illusion).

Last Night: Pet attacks a blue while the rest of the group fights the Red and im also fighting the red cause my pet can handle it:
At the end of the fight my pet is less than 1/2 health: both times pet was full health to begin with.

Ok, here's the deal. So you say that the DEX buff for our pets (I'm a Druid) now affects the AF of the pet instead of the attack capabilities. Right? Depending on how I use my pet, this is one hell of a serious change. You basically change my pet from high offense/low defense to low offense/medium defense (at best, seems more like low defense). That's a HUGE change, not just a small change.

The way I've played up until this patch is to DOT the enemy, send my pet, melee until dead. I could take blues and yellows pretty easily that way. Yellows would typically take me to half health. The stratagy for orange mobs was to send my pet, heal my pet until it agros on me or it is more than half dead, then melee the rest of it. Since the patch, I can't do any of this.

I can still struggle through blues and consider my pet somewhat reliable there, but yellows are damn near impossible now and forget about orange mobs. Personally, I don't care about orange mobs, don't really hunt them much because it isn't as efficient as killing blues and yellows.

My problem with all of this is that you say "there's a change to DEX buffs" but give NO indication that it will severely affect some classes (pet classes, to be specific). So we try to play our characters just as we have been and we get killed over and over again. Mythic could have saved most of us a lot of headaches by simply warning us that we may have to change our style of play because of this change.

Oh, what's that, you say? You didn't know it would affect us so badly? So why did you pull the new code off test so fast? A change like that should have been on test a week or so before you put it live. At least.

Just a friendly bump to keep this close to the top.
I have to agree with Greys here, as he said and I have stated in a few of my posts on this thread, reducing the amount of exp our pet takes is NOT going to fix this problem. Our pets need to be able to deal damage in RvR to make our class viable.

Sanya,
No rants today, even though yesterday I had the old flamethrower on extra crispy - yesterday's patch had some seriously detrimental effects. First off, I just started a Hunter this week - he made level 7 last night. Hunters, fo those who are not in the know are archers and pet classes. From everything I've read, the Hunter is the weakest archer in the game. As a pet class, I should be able to solo a yellow no problem, I have to share exp. with the pet. This problem has affected me too. Yesterday, I got hit with a double whammy. So, yes, last night I was ready to burn my copy of DAoC. Sorry, but when I log in to find that my arrows now miss almost as often as they hit, and that my pet is behaving the same way, that's bad. Add to that the fact that now both are doing less damage...that just sucks. Obviously, the pet hit/damage issue is a bug. To be honest, the Archer nerf, and even you called it a nerf, isn't as bad as the pet bug. When my pet hits now, it is sometimes impossible to even see the mob's health bar move. That is against a blue mob with a green pet (both conned by me). These fights should not be struggles for survival - which some of them are. I'm getting XP now as if I were soloing greens. I logged in yesterday with about 2 bubbles into 6th level - it took me over 5 hours to hit level 7. I've played a druid in the past (and still have him) and I can say with all honesty that 7 can be done in less than 3 hours, more like 2 for the druid. Even my thane got 7th in about 3 hours, and that was soloing blues.
So, yes, there are some serious issues now, that were not there before. In attempting to balance the game, you've skewed it further than it ever was. That's not a flame, just the way I see it. Thanks for getting out here and putting up with the flames. I do have one suggestion, and that is that Mythic needs to begin passing more info to its players. No one likes being kept in the dark.

Pet classes have always been fairly weak in RvR, with no ranged attacks, and since people can simply run away from most pets.

Of all the pet classes, Enchanters were the weakest in RvR, and extremely buggy.

Now, with a huge change to pets, we're easily the weakest RvR class, and Enchanters are pushed even lower on the list.

There were only a few Enchanters pre-patch, and now I'll bet there will be none. But what's the point in re-rolling if the next class I choose will just be changed so dramatically after I hit level 40?

Please put pets back the way they were. I don't want a defensive dex buff, I want my pet to be able to hit people, like it could pre-patch. RvR battles don't last long, and I don't care if my pet dies or not. I need it to be able to have damage output!

I play a 31st level enchanter with pts split equal between Light and Enchantment.

I do not think the pet classes should be able to solo a red mob with ease, but in my experience I was never able to take a red mob without blowing all of my mana, and on a 50/50 basis my pet would die too. This is not some sercret way to power level...I only took reds if I had to, and knew that I would prolly die.

I could take 2 mid orange mobs (not at the same time before having to rest and regain mana, or 4 yellow mobs (again, one at a time). While soloing I leveled at about the same rate as the other players in my guild.

+++++++++++++++++++
Here Is The Problem
+++++++++++++++++++

After the patch, my pet (fully buffed) is missing often while trying to hit BLUE mobs....not red mobs, not purple mobs...BLUE mobs....My pet also missed 2 times in a fight with a GREEN mob.

I play a lot with a 29th level druid, and even with all his buffs on my pet it was still missing low yellow and BLUE mobs on a regular basis.

The pet will hardly hold aggro, and we both could be seen running for cover while hunting sett dwellers and ludacrans (sp)...

I just want to know if this was intentional. After 6 hours of playin I was only able to gain 4 bubbles of exp while hunting solo or with one 29th druid. We were taking Blue and Low yellow mobs. When we tried to take low Orange mobs like we normally do, my fully buffed pet could not hold aggro due to the fact that he missed so often (like 15-25 times) that he would have to be healed alot while inflicting almost no damage.

Again, I dont want to be able to solo purples...or reds...or high/mid oranges...I want to be able to solo BLUES and Yellows so that I can get the same exp as a solo Champion or Blademaster that solo's a blue or low yellow.

I dont play a pet class but I group with an Enchanter, Champ, and Bard all the time and I can ASSURE something DRASTICALLY changed last night.

Let me explain:

Typically we would fight at Mermen and Champ would get singles or doubles which I(Mentalist) or Bard would Mez. If it were a Single, Chanters' Pet would go in and hold aggro while Chanter would sorta maintain pet. Champ would do what Champs do and Myself and the Bard would heal pet. I would also Stack Dots and nuke from time to time to get mermen ded fast

On a double pull the Bard and I would watch each other, If I got it mezed she would watch pet and Champ healing and save me if Mez broke and I was having trouble. Vice versa for Her. In this scenario, Chanter would burn most of his mana if not all of it trying to take out the first mob so we could get to the second before all the mez timers wore off. This worked wonderfully while still very challenging.

Last night after the patch if Myself, Bard, or Draxs tried to cast anything at all the mob would go for us.. We would then have to aggrokite the mob dead and could take almost 10 min for a kill. Combine that with the fact that Champ and or Pet running behind doing constant damage could not break aggro. ALSO the mobs are able for some LAME reason able to hit thru thier back while running effectivly attacking 2 targets at once. This is when we got damn pissed and logged.

This looks like a HUGE HUGE Nerf to Enchanters as hell, we were even in a group and couldnt take mobs down

#1 game is level based, higher your level more effective you are in PvE or RvR

#2 as a druid on one server I already know that my pet is at least 3 levels below an orange.

#3 the nature line is the only means by which a druid can solo as we have no debuffs and no nukes

#4 Gimped pet equals gimped character

of course now mythic does say not to totally spec out in 1 line preferable keep 2-3 lines at 2/3rds your level depending on spec points

The thing is mythic like other companies WANT you to group, they dont want you to solo, thus they have you grind out on blue/green mobs over and over that how they make thier money.

What ends up happening is that you cant find a group because your nerfed/gimped and dont contribute to a group, not to mention never knowing when the next "balance" patch is comeing so you never no for sure WHERE to put your points.

So I challange mythic to answer this.if we are suppose to be able to solo oranges effectivly as a melee solo's a yellow or blue to keep in line with the exp gain, and you remove this, how is that balance, how can we be effective solo players dependent on pets and the nuture line, without specing in it, yet then be able to flip to group and RvR with less then speced out buffs or heals

In order to be well rounded we must be at least half-speced out in all lines and that in the end ='s a level 50 with level 25 spells or abilities that is useless in group or rvr play, seems to me that all classes need at least 1.5 spec points per level so that ALL class have an option to be well rounded. personally I find it ammusing that I can have a blademaster fully speced in blades and celtic wield, but only half speced in parry at 50 keeping in mind that I have no shield to block with, and im suppose to be the Blademaster

"Another thing - your pet should still be able to contribute in a group to a red fight. In a group, every entity attacking the enemy adds a bonus to attackers. That bonus makes it easier for everyone in the group (including pets) to land damage on the enemy. So a four person, two pet group would have six small bonuses to attack, assuming everyone in the group is attacking, casting, or some such. This bonus is supposed to take your pet to red/low purple capability in a group.

Does that make things any clearer? This was NOT a stealth nerf, at all. We are open to tweaking things. If you are not viable in a group, I am concerned"

Sanya what this pretty much means is that enchanters need to be the highest level member of the group to count on being effective. A perfectly reasonable group, for example, could have lvl ranges of 23 to 28. If the enchanter is level 23 he's not going to be effective in this group.

Perhaps you could be a _little_ more specifc on exactly what a "low purple" is.

*edit*

One other thing. Please quit mincing words. Yes *technically* this was not a stealth nerf but the cold hard reality is that your words in no way reflected the magnitude of the change. This was a class that was used to easily soloing oranges and soloing most reds with only moderate difficulty and you changed it to where yellows, hell even high blues can be a very a dicey proposition.

That's a change of such magnitude that it deserves a little bit more than the casual passing reference you gave it in the patch message.

My contribution to a group however has become pitiful. My pet misses so much now, he doesn't do enough damage to hold decent aggro (sometimes there isn't a 'true' warrior around to group with.. ).. since it has little aggro, if a healer tries to give the pet a heal, the mob jumps all over the healer, and since the pet is mostly missing, it has no chance to get back aggro, unless another melee in the group does. Honestly, I believe I am now better off not even casting a pet and just focusing on debuffs and mezing, and late fight nuking. Tis a shame though, cause I really deserve the points I put into summoning back (as does every class who gets banged with the nerf stick like this). At one time Mythic promised to return points when they made major changes to a skill.

The changes made yesterday just increased the tediousness of the the exp grind, which for a while, I thought that this game was about rvr and not making people spend hours and hours grinding away killing the same mobs over and over and over again.

And yes, level is truly king in Rvr for the most part, a bit in front of just good tactics, so exp grinding is a necessary evil.

I'm not used to spending money on an unfinished product. Do i get a refund for the days that I've decided aren't worth playing because you have completely gimped my enchanter while you guys figure out what additional tweaking needs to be done? Having my character go from 'x' level of power to something *substantially* less than that with no explanation or compensation IS NOT FUN! It's just not. I tried playing him all day yesterday, and could not find any viable way of being able to hunt yellows safely. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO KILL A YELLOW 100% OF THE TIME WITH A PET (unless I do something stupid). So what gives? The thing I was most excited about in this game was not just the quality of the game itself and what I felt like was the great implementation of pvp but the fact that I had seen Mythic employees say time and TIME again about how much they hated the idea of nerfing (especially, god forbid, without telling the players- I really never EVER thought i would see this from you guys. And no your blurb about dex debuff changes does not count and you know it). I have invested *alot* of time playing my enchanter to level 34. If I would have seen my pet as being this gimped from the beginning I guarantee you I would have stopped and rolled another class. So basically I've been playing for over a month now under false pretenses. Thinking that I am getting one thing and then you turn around and change it on me and I have something else now. Even if you do make additional tweaks to somehow compensate for this, you've still stuck me with a character that I never agreed to play. Every day I have logged in my enchanter it's because everything I had experienced up until that point had compelled me to continue playing him. Now my character is completely different. I haven't agreed to this character. It's not the one I have spent all this time on. Now, all I can do is hope I enjoy playing whatever variation you decide is the final implementation of the enchanter. And if I don't, my time playing this character is completely wasted. Thanks alot Mythic. Something better change fast because this is one paying customer you are about to lose.

Just a couple of notes. First, I posted a suggestion that post-patch pets be made the same level as their casters, but it appears to be lost in the shuffle. I'm curious to see some dev feedback on the idea, so below is a link to the post (I won't repaste the entire thing here to save space):

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=19512198&replies=0

Also, I wanted to reply briefly to one of Sanya's comments above:

"... The old line...allowed pets to hit monsters three or four COLORS above their level as opposed to three or four LEVELS above their level. ....

The pets aren't capable of being the sole offensive tank anymore. Still a tank, but it can't tank a purple.

But there IS room for tweaking here. The spell guy said he has already said to the team leads that he is looking into increasing damage that you do, to compensate for the weaker pet.

Another thing - your pet should still be able to contribute in a group to a red fight. In a group, every entity attacking the enemy adds a bonus to attackers. That bonus makes it easier for everyone in the group (including pets) to land damage on the enemy. So a four person, two pet group would have six small bonuses to attack, assuming everyone in the group is attacking, casting, or some such. This bonus is supposed to take your pet to red/low purple capability in a group."

There are a couple of flaws in the logic above. First, the small group bonuses Sanya mentions were balanced using the old system. Thus there is no guarantee the bonus is enough to allow a pet which is, say, six or ten levels below a monster to have any chance to hit at all, even in a large group. This might have been true prior to the patch, but the scope of the change was so large it may very well not be true now.

Also, I'm not sure I understand the benefit to the game of the pet not being able to be the sole tank, especially if the caster is solo. Surely the whole purpose of the pet is to act as a tank that is slightly weaker than a player character of the same level? If the pet isn't supposed to act in that role, especially when the caster is solo, then why is it there?

Finally, increasing the damage done by the pet does NOT help, since the problem is that the pet is unable to hit in the first place against monsters which are orange or higher to the caster. The only way to solve the problem is to do something which helps the pet hit more; the simplest and most obvious solution, as I suggested before, is to simply make pets equal level to the caster. They'd still be weaker than player-tanks of that level (since they have no styles or magic items, for instance), but they'd be able to actively take part and do some damage in any fight a tank of that level can take part in.

I'd really appreciate it if you could read the thread I posted a link to above and let me know what you think. I honestly think making pets equal level to the casters would solve a lot of the current problems without making the pet class more powerful or make other classes obsolete in a group.

Pre-stealth nerf I could NEVER take out a red. Low oranges WERE possible, but with xp equal to any other classes yellows, and more downtime.

This most recent nerf makes us NOT WANTED by groups. You can talk about stats and this and that but no one wants us. That makes the game LESS fun, and us frustrated/quitting.

I was already upset that the Theurgs I would hunt with could solo reds with ease, 2 oranges no prob, and had almost no downtime. I thought "Man, I am a primary PET class... you would think my pets would be stronger...". I didn't complain tho... just kept having fun. Now that I can no longer even think about fighting an orange, it is unbearable to watch a theurg lower level than me take on 2 (TWO!) things at once that I can't solo 1 on 1.

This was a major change to the class, and needs to be looked at and reversed. All of the primary pet classes are dependant on having a strong pet to make them viable. We no longer have that.

Thank you for your time, please forward this message on to the appropriate people.

Now, I tried some PvP today. My pet used to be a serious threat to a yellow con caster. Today, I had a yellow con caster WAVE AT ME while my pet tried to hit him and could not connect.

This is not good, and I personally will not wait several months for Mythic to finally take a serious look at our class. I've dealt with these nerf happy companies before, and it just isn't worth the stress.

And the caster WAVING at you while the pet swung away? That is just embarrassing... Sanya, taking notes here?

For me the most embarrassing thing is still when I am trying to camp a spot with YELLOWS solo, and when one that is slightly higher (very low orange) pops, I have to call a theurg who is 2 levels lower than me over to kill it, since I will die if I try. And she kills it using 1/3 of her mana...

"And the caster WAVING at you while the pet swung away? That is just embarrassing... Sanya, taking notes here? "

Yeah, how ridiculous. I guess he read the forums and knew how gimped my pet was, so he just stood there and waved, after he noticed my pet missed twice in a row.

I have a friend who's level 30, and he had a buddy of his come meet him by a portal fort (someone who played in another realm). He sent his Enchanter pet in to see if he could still kill his enemy, but the pet missed, and missed, and missed. When the pet hit, it did minimal damage. This was against a caster! They basically determined that his Enchanter was nerfed, and using his pet was a waste of time. He said that after about 10 swings, the caster still had HP left. Also, the caster could run away, without being hit from behind by the pet.

So what's the point of having a pet now? There is none. It doesn't even hit often enough to kill a caster.

Really depressing, and for the first time, I've seriously considered cancelling my account. Too many nerfs lately, and I'm tired of being nervous that the nerf bat will hit me yet again.

I know you said the spell developer was looking at adding to our damage but unless it is to our enchant arms line. All of us enchanters that are fully spec'ed in enchantment are worthless.

I cannot see why any group would want us over any other class. We have nothing to contribute uniquely. Besides that every group I have ever been with we soloed purples. It is bad enough we have to use our level 12 pets because AE stun brakes mes. Now our pet misses 70% of the time on these mobs. With no points in light my blasts get resisted a LOT and when they do hit do very little damage.

If you are going to keep us nurfed at least allow us the option to reallocate our skill points or let us reselect classes.

When I allocated my points I planned on killing in RVR with my pet and having it be worth while in groups i.e. tanking adds. Now I am worthless and this is not how I wan to play my enchanter.

One last note for more input on enchanters, numbers, examples and lots of flames message please look at the enchanter class board.

One more thing while I am still sane, rational, and in non-hellfire flame mode.

The beta went on for 1.5 years.

I chose my class from what I had fun with in Beta. Many things changed in Beta... but this is a FINAL PRODUCT.

Now entire classes have been drastically changed. Why wasn't this done in Beta? Isn't that what it was for?

Making gigantic changes to a class after people have put many weeks/months of hard work into them is wrong. People have specialized one way, and now they are useless.

Spin it however you want, the majority rules in the game. And the majority wants groups that take on purples.

If you doubt anything anyone is saying here, grab some people, start up some pet classes, spec'ing in the pet lines (like these guys did). Go and put in 10+ DAYS of playtime. Observe how many groups you get into. Observer how others go up in xp compared to you. Watch the other players laugh at you.

I am concerned about increasing the damage my I do to a mob while pet tanking might make it agro on me all the time. In solo this would be a sure time to run, in a group, they might not be able to get the agro ff of me.

If it agros on me at the first cast, to the point that I get creamed it would be bad.

Pet casters need to have thier pet's ability to hold aggro RESTORED weather or not they can do lots of melee damage to it. give them some sort of taunt if you have to, but this is a MAJOR game change after release and its causeing lots of problems